Saturday, December 24, 2005

Merry Christmas!

Well, we just got the kids to bed, and finished up all of our Christmas gift activities for the day. We started at noon, and it is now after 11 PM.

My work began yesterday. I spent a big part of the day removing the carpet tape from the bottom of the pieces of my little boy's Thomas the Train track. You see, we got him some new parts, and of course to go along with that, we had to have a whole new layout. My finger tips are now quite sore, and I have several blisters from removing the tape. Note to anyone else out there with the bright idea to mount Thomas track with carpet tape: USE A MINIMAL AMOUNT! I had coated the bottom of each piece completely. And while it was not difficult to remove from the smooth table surface, removing the tape from the wooden track pieces was MUCH MORE DIFFICULT!

Then once that was done, I had to get the new layout configured. His table is not that large, so coming up with a new layout with the new pieces was quite a challenge. But after many hours, and a clever suggestion from my wife, I was able to get it to be everything that I wanted, and was able to use all of the new stuff, and a vast majority of most of the track.

Then comes today. We started at 8am getting the house ready for the guests, and doing some last minute errands to the store for some final items. Surprisingly, Wal-Mart wasn't all that busy at 9:30am. Yeah! Once that was done, we called my folks in Florida on the speaker phone.

The kids opened all of their presents, and the parents were able to listen to all of the hollering and screaming. I think they enjoyed that, but I think we were able to convince them that they need to come in next year.

We ordered pizza, and I went to get that as the guests arrived. I got back, turned on the video camera (I placed it high up this time. I used our entertainment stand, and my tripod on top of that to give a high angle shot that got most of the action in the frame.) We came up with a more organized approach to the chaos this year, and we were able to get all of the gifts unwrapped in an hour and half. Notice I said, unwrapped, and not opened. We saved that for later, and did that at a much slower pace. There are still things unopened at this point.

We had some cake, and pizza, and watched Polar Express. I got to watch the first part, and then the guys left the room to have some fun with photos and video for a short while. I'll post a video from all of the fun in the next week or so. Maybe sooner if I get the time.

The guests left, and the kids with my wife's parents for a while. Kim and I spent the next little while putting together some toys, and cleaning up some. We finished up by going to visit her parents, and pick up the kids.

We came home, opened a couple more items. Two of which are pictured here. Kim and I got each other these HUGE R/C cars. I like Tony Stewart, and she likes Jimmie Johnson. We can't wait to race them. Provided the weather holds, we'll do that tomorrow, and hopefully I get some photos of them, or maybe some video. They are supposed to go quite fast. I hope so.

So, I wanted to share a little of our day with you, and to unwind from all of the activity for the day by writing this. I hope that Christmas has been good to each of you, and I hope everyone enjoys the time off to be with family.